What kind of man was Riccimir? Ulric asked a good, sensible question. But did the Bizogot care about good, sensible questions, or did he simply want to open Gudrid's legs? If he didn't feel like listening, what could the travelers do? Not much—if it came to a fight, they were bound to lose.
The jarl scowled at Ulric Skakki. When he did, Hamnet Thyssen's hopes rose. Riccimir understood what Ulric was saying, anyway. "You are not good guests," he grumbled. "Guests should follow the ways of the hosts. Our women would not raise such a fuss over a small thing."
"A small thing?" Trasamund said. "Don't you have a big thing, Riccimir?"
"I do. By God, I do!" Riccimir answered, laughing. "We are the Leaping Lynxes, but I am a mammoth. Maybe I am too much for a woman of the south."
"Maybe you are," Ulric Skakki said, and the tension eased.
"Much help you were," Gudrid hissed at Hamnet Thyssen a little later.
"By God, why should I help you?" he asked in honest perplexity. "I don't want you here. I wish you'd go back to Nidaros. I don't feel anything for you any more."
He wished that were true. The hopeless mix of curdled love and fury that coursed through him whenever he thought of Gudrid chewed his stomach to sour rags and made him want either to hit something—preferably her— or stab himself. Gudrid knew it. She enjoyed it—she reveled in it. He did his best not to admit it.
Usually, his best was nowhere near good enough. Tonight, it served. "You would have let that—that savage do what he wanted to me!" Gudrid said shrilly.
"This was one of the chances you took when you left the Empire," Ham-net pointed out. "Anyone with an ounce of sense would know it. No doubt that lets you out."
She swung on him. She was very quick, but again he caught her wrist before she connected. He was much stronger than she was. It hardly ever did him any good. She said something that would have horrified a drill sergeant. It didn't faze Hamnet Thyssen.
When she tried to bite him, he shoved her away, hard. She sat down even harder, and called him a name that made the first one seem like love poetry by comparison. Again, he scarcely noticed. He rubbed his hand against his trouser leg, trying to wipe away even the memory of touching her.
"Never a dull moment, is there?" Ulric Skakki said, his voice dry.
"Why, what ever could you mean?" Hamnet Thyssen trying to sound arch and coy was as unnatural as a musk ox trying to play the trumpet. Ulric did his best not to laugh, but it was a losing battle.
Sulking, Riccimir went off with a Bizogot woman. She was younger and better built than Gudrid, and at least as pretty, even if she didn't wear perfume. The jarl stayed grumpy all the same- No doubt he would have been glad enough to lie down with her if he hadn't set eyes on Gudrid. Since he had, the woman from his own clan wasn't what he wanted any more. That made her seem like secondhand goods to him.
"Foolishness," Ulric Skakki said. "Everything that goes on between men and women is full of foolishness."
"True enough," Hamnet said. "But so what? For better or worse, we're stuck with each other." He knew too much about worse and not enough of better.
"Well, not necessarily." Ulric sent him a sly, sidelong glance. "Although I must say you're not my type." He made himself mince far better than Count Hamnet made himself sound naive.
"Those things happen down in the Empire. Not up here, not very often," Hamnet said. "When the Bizogots catch men bedding men, they make them into eunuchs and then they burn them. Not a lot of give to the mammoth-herders. Their ways are their ways. You step outside them at your peril."
"Charming people." Ulric was also a dab hand at irony.
"Aren't they?" There, at least, Hamnet Thyssen could match him.
The Leaping Lynx Bizogots stuffed the travelers with more roast fowl and with boiled duck and goose eggs the next morning. Riccimir seemed in a better mood than he had the night before. Maybe the buxom blonde from his own clan pleased him more than he'd thought she would. Whatever the reason, he didn't try to hinder the travelers when they mounted their horses to ride away from what was as close to a settled village as the northern nomads came.
He couldn't resist going after the last word, though. He walked up to Gudrid and said, "My pretty, you will remember last night forever."
"Why?" she said. "Nothing happened between us." By the look in her eye, she was glad nothing happened, too.
Riccimir ignored that look. It wasn't easy; Hamnet Thyssen envied his singlemindedness. "That is why you will remember it," he said. "You will regret that you did not come to know the mighty love of Riccimir." He struck a pose.
What Gudrid's horse did a moment later probably matched her opinion of Riccimir's mighty love. His clansmates could dry the results and use them for warmth and cooking. If she had spoken, her words probably would have given them plenty of warmth, too. As things were, her expression was eloquent enough. The jarl, convinced to the marrow that he was wonderful, never noticed.
"Are we ready?" Eyvind Torfinn said. "Perhaps we should depart, then."
"God keep you safe on your journey," Riccimir said. "May he bring you back to your homes with wealth or wisdom or whatever you seek. And may he bring you to my clan on your way south. Good will be the guesting on your return—and may the sweet one's heart be softened by then."
Count Hamnet didn't see how Eyvind Torfinn could answer that without landing in trouble with Riccimir or with Gudrid or with both of them at once. Earl Eyvind showed uncommon wisdom—he didn't try. He flicked his horse's reins and used the pressure of his knees to urge the beast forward. The rest of the Raumsdalians and Trasamund followed.
"An interesting time," Audun Gilli said, riding up alongside Hamnet and Ulric Skakki.
"That's one way to put it," Hamnet said. "Some interesting times I could live without."
"It wasn't so bad," Audun said.
"Demons take me if it wasn't!" Hamnet exclaimed.
Ulric laughed. "He didn't mind it, Thyssen. Didn't you see him go off with that Bizogot wench?" His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.
"No, I didn't." Hamnet couldn't remember when he'd lost track of the wizard. Audun wasn't what anyone would call memorable, so he had trouble. "When was this?"
"You were exchanging compliments with your lady love." Ulric Skakki stopped. Hamnet Thyssen had a hand on his swordhilt. He probably also had murder in his eye. He didn't mind being chaffed about many things. The list was short, yes, but Gudrid headed it. Ulric hastened to backtrack. "My apologies, your Grace. When you were quarreling with your former wife, I should have said."
"Yes. You should have." Hamnet made his hand come off the sword. He made himself look away from Ulric Skakki and toward Audun Gilli. "So. You lay down with a Bizogot woman, did you? How was it? Did you have to hold your nose?"
"I'm not so clean myself these days. After a bit, you stop noticing that." Audun grinned. It made him look surprisingly young. "As for the rest, well, the parts work the same way here as they do down in the Empire."
"There's a surprise." Ulric Skakki grinned, too.
Count Hamnet only grunted. Losing Gudrid had soured him on women. He still bedded them now and again—sometimes his body drove him to do what he wanted to despise. But he couldn't take them lightly, the way most men did.
Trasamund led them away from Sudertorp Lake. The jarl of the Three Tusk clan was not in a good humor. Since Hamnet Thyssen wasn't, either, he soon found himself riding next to Trasamund. The big blond jarl scowled at him. When he scowled back, Trasamund seemed satisfied.
After a while, Trasamund said, "That Leaping Lynx clan .. ." He didn't seem to know how to go on.
"What about them?" Hamnet asked.
"They hardly seem like Bizogots at all!" It burst from Trasamund.
They seemed very much like Bizogots to Hamnet. But he was looking at them from the outside, not from the inside the way the jarl was. Slowly, he said, "The waterfowl give them so much to eat at this season, they don't have to wander. Things are different when you can stay in one place for a long time."
"I suppose so." Trasamund went right on scowling. "It's wrong, though. It's unnatural. They . .. might as well be Raumsdalians." By the way he said it, he couldn't imagine a stronger condemnation.
"I will tell you, your Ferocity, that to a Raumsdalian they don't seem much like Raumsdalians at all," Count Hamnet said.
"They live in stone houses. They have fat people. They are like Raumsdalians." No, Trasamund had no more idea of what being a Raumsdalian meant—probably less—than Hamnet did about being a Bizogot. He also didn't know that he really didn't know what being a Raumsdalian meant.
Arguing with him would only make him angry. Hamnet Thyssen didn't try. Instead, looking out across the frozen plain, he pointed and asked, "What's that?"